


Maladaptive

by Deejaymil



Series: Original Stories by a Bored Australian [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Horror, Prompt Fill, Rubber Band, gymnasium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>adjective : maladaptive </p><p>not providing adequate or appropriate adjustment to the environment or situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maladaptive

**Author's Note:**

> Original flash fiction for the prompt 'Horror, Rubber band, Gymnasium'

 

 

Matilda examines the pills held out invitingly towards her in Nate’s palm. It’s an offer of companionship, but his eyes are cold. She can see the aversion in the line of his mouth, and the firm set to his slim shoulders.

He doesn’t like her. None of them do.

 _Flick, flick, flick._ His fingers twitch slightly as they brush her clammy skin, stopping the band from snapping against her.

“Just take them,” he says, tossing a lock of dirty blonde hair back like a nervous thoroughbred. “You want to fit in, right? You said that’s what you wanted.”

 _Flick, flick, flick._ Considering. Look at the opportunities presented, Matilda. Pros and cons. Just like mum taught you.

“She’s not going to.” A second voice, made unfamiliar by the echoing space of the school gymnasium. Five shadows form a loose ring around her; faces obscured by the deep gloom of night. Someone holds their phone up as a light, glittering off the broken window they’d entered through. “Mad Mattie, chickening out again.”

A soft chant of Mad Mattie starts. _Flick, flick, flick._

She swallows the pills, bitter taste cloying in the back of her throat. Nate hisses out a triumphant breath. The others follow and silence surrounds them like a noxious fog. They all wait.

She’s impatient. Always has been. “They’re not working.” She snaps the rubber band for emphasis, feeling it sting on the perpetual welting left behind. It is a savage sort of pleasure.

Nate’s head lolls back on a loose neck, ignoring her. She glares at him. It was all his fault. She wouldn’t be here at all, in this sticky hot gym with five other strangers dressed in their itchy school blazers, not if she hadn’t decided to try and impress him.

He was handsome, sure, but mostly he was normal. Someone to hang off her arm and people would look at her and say, “Hey, look at Matilda. She used to be mad, you know, but she’s not anymore. She can’t be mad if she’s got Nate.”

He was stupid. Dull. But useful.

The most interesting thing about him was his body. She had always been endlessly fascinated by what was hidden beneath the skin, the cogs and gears that drove the human form.

She closes her eyes and waits, tensing her fingers and imagining the coil of the tendons in her hands.

After endless time oozes by, she hears a dry cough and blinks awake, noting with a floating disconnect that Nate is standing in front of her. She sits up; her arms slow to respond, legs like dead things on the floor around her.

His face is a black nothingness drawing her in and when he opens his mouth, it’s no longer a part of him. “Why are you even here?” his mouth asks bluntly, and she startles in surprise at the hollowness to his voice. His eyes watch her and buzz in her mind, _“Why are you even alive?”_

“You asked me to come,” she says, feeling the words become thick and clumsy in her mouth, heart beginning to beat a tempo in her chest. She reaches across to her wrist, and feels the beat ease as the band cracks against her skin. _Flick, flick, flick._

“We never wanted you here,” another voice hisses, and she turns her head and it’s one of the strangers, but wrong. His skin isn’t attached to his body right, it slips and catches as he turns his head towards her, and she can see the way it pulls tight against his skeleton and hangs loose in others. “Why would we want you here?”

_Flick, flick, flick._

A girl laughs and it’s a whiplash noise, striking her like a blow. “Mad Mattie, Mad Mattie, Mad Mattie…” They’re reaching towards her with clinging hands, and now Matilda can see them clearly and they’re _different_.

Empty eyes in sunken sockets, bones that shift under fragile skin and tear through as though they’re covered by cheap tissue paper. They’ve become wounds, open gashes that allows her to see right into them, deep into their cores.

Nate jerks and coughs again, a wet rattling sound that makes her throat feel sore. She pulls away from the grasping hands, considering. _Flick, flick, flick._

Their hands never make contact. They don’t touch. _They’re not real._ Side-effects of the pill.

Disappointing. She’d expected more.

“You’re stupid,” she snaps at Nate, irritation replacing the congealing anxiety. He opens one eye and peers blearily at her, a round oozing hold appearing in his forehead and dripping slowly down his nose.

“Smarter than you,” he slurs, sitting up sluggishly. “It’s okay though. I’ll help you, Mattie. You can use my brains, since I have no use of them anymore.”

He turns his head and suddenly everything is very interesting again; pulsing and red and _right there._ She leans forward, barely able to catch her breath as she stares into what makes Nate _Nate_ ; what makes him tick, makes him work. This isn’t boring or uninteresting anymore; this is seductively intriguing.

 _Flickflickflickflickflick._ The tempo increases to a frenetic pace, matching the stuttering of her pulse.

Her hand touches him and it’s not an open window into his head anymore, but hair still sticky with the gel he’d put on that morning. A shaggy cut two years out of style, and splitting at the ends.

She huffs angrily, the world sharpening around her and becoming clear. Nate lays in front of her, unmoving. Unchanged. She wants to slap him, repay him some of the disappointment that paralyses her.

He shudders under her hand, eyes rolling strangely under bruised lids and there’s a single moment frozen in time where his body stiffens and curls, mouth gaping.

She stares at him, fascinated once more, as his body shakes itself into a seizure. Fascinating. Everyone else lies around them, unconscious, unaware. Only she is lucky enough to view this.

She watches and her hand falls away from her wrist, the band still.


End file.
